Entry tags:

food, godwin's, jokes that don't go over well, racism

You got your racism in my coffee! You got your coffee in my racism!
evilgrins delivered a list of bogus food terms to the food_porn community which was kind of amusing but the last definition...

arab coffee: Thick, black, bitter coffee, traditionally served in tiny cups at gunpoint.

...really inspired some, uh, debate.

likeawoman is accused of being likeatroll for staying determinedly offended by everyone but obfuscate brings up Godwins first. "If you replace "arab coffee" with "matzo" is it an insult to Jews? "Haggis" (I hear it's good, but what the hell.. who came up with that?), and it's a comment on how violent those damn Scots are? Put "borscht" in there and you're pissing on the Slavs? "Liverwurst" would then, I suppose, mean that all Germans are violent Nazis."

Nobody likes a laugh more than me. Except for my wife. And Mrs. Johnson.

Define 'Offensive.'

Am I the only one that likes Turkish Coffee?

Why the random-ass definitions anyway?

As a White Canadian Female, let me clarify things for ya'll.

See, this is why I drink tea.

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mistress_mab
2007-09-24 04:35 am UTC (link)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about race being a meaningless social construct (or that it should be). Would you mind clarifying? I'm sincerely interested, but if you'd rather not get into it here, I really do understand.

It makes about as much sense as discriminating against people with brown hair.

Which is just dumb, because it's those ginger heads that everyone hates. /sarcasm

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forevagreeneart
2007-09-24 01:05 pm UTC (link)

Well, since it doesn't look the OP will respond, I can take a stab at it, though I'm not really an expert.

Basically, what the person above is saying is that race has no more of a genetic basis than hair color or attached/detached earlobes. There is, in reality, no more of a genetic difference between a Greek person and a white person than there is between two white people. However, humans (being the stupid creatures that they are) have decided to divide people up by certain sets of common physical characteristics and define them as a certain race. For example; if your eyes tilt upward and your skin has a golden tone to it, you're Asian.

P.S. If I'm wrong here, someone please correct me.
P.P.S Please forgive my weird grammar, I haven't spoken English for a month.

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	goblin 2007-09-24 02:17 pm UTC (link)
	So basically it makes more sense to divide everyone up into "tall" "medium" and "short" races than to do it based on nose width. The point of this whole argument is that the methods human society use to decide race are incredibly arbitrary and meaningless. Inevitably, some dumb ass learning this in Soc 101 decides this means there's no such thing as racism. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

panthea
2007-09-25 03:12 pm UTC (link)

I always like to drag out the Brazilian definition of race at times like these (half-remembered from a long-ago anthro class, but if I've ever got it wrong, no one's enlightened me yet)-- entirely dependent on your hair, eye, and skin color, and nothing whatsoever to do with, say, ancestry. So you could be considered a different "race" from your parents just because you're blond and they're not.

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	amymccabe 2007-09-24 01:26 pm UTC (link)
	Basically some studies have shown that genetically is non-existent. Race has no influence over how genetically close or distance you are to a person. If you want, I can hunt down a few of the studies later. (Reply to this)(Parent)

iwanttobeasleep
2007-09-24 08:44 pm UTC (link)

What everyone else says, and in addition "race" greatly oversimplifies. Pretty much all Europeans (and people of European descent) get classified as "white", but there's a shit load of difference in terms of culture and even overall appearance. Likewise, "black" encompasses people from Africa and their descendants on other continents, but it would also include someone from Jamaica and other islands, where again, there is little connection culturally or even in overall appearance (other than skin tone). Add to that the classification of people who are part of more than one "Race" and how people who are half or even a quarter black still count as black (see: Tiger Woods), and race becomes so muddled it's meaningless.

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